Castle Point. So right wing it makes the Tories seem almost Socialist.
One of UKIPs main targets at the election. My vote has been irrelevant since the 1997 Blair blip when labour won the seat.

The most spiteful thing I can do is vote UKIP to ensure a triumphant entry into the commons for Nige Farage and his cronies instead of the half-witted MP we have currently.

I hope you can tell I’m not happy ….

Footpaths – fair game

as long as:-

slow down for walkers
do not cause erosion
avoid peak times blah blah blah etc etc….

This may be taken as blasphemy but in my locality horse riders cause more damage to footpaths than mountain bikers…….

Thanks Iam one nice messenger bag for 80p. Lovely…

Perhaps consider the new 9 sp Alivio, my son has it on his bike and it’s better than deore from five years ago. Not sure how it compares price wise.

Not withstanding the Halford jibes this
voodoo
hoodoo

At the time of posting £449.99…..

I’m working my three month notice at the moment and it is rather disconcerting to hear some of these stories. I’m 50 years old now and I’ve been looking for work seriously for the last six weeks. I live in Essex and Jobs specs for which I believed I would be offered an interview for have returned ‘no thank you’ emails, so either there are lots of ‘really’ good people looking for work, my age is being held against me or there really is no work. I’m particularly not looking forward to the job centre experience, but I will be claiming despite a good redundancy package as I want my tick to go in the ONS box.

Karl Urban? I know he’s done Judge Dredd and Dr McCoy recently,but not alot of acting’s required. Perhaps Eric Bana with hair? Not a Star Trek fan here, no sir, certainly not……

Thank you for that! Ordered some bar tape and entries for a Ride-it event, £5 voucher still worked.

If you’ve got a decathlon nearby – one of these

Decathlon Arpenaz 300

£21 – I would agree with the windproof sentiment, much better for cycling. However this is a pretty good outdoor coat for not much money.

Did the Cross thing last year when I bought a Whyte Kings Cross. Living in Essex (near the Olympic MTB course) it’s better equipped for doing road / trail riding which makes up most of the riding round here. Only use my MTBs now when I occasionally go somewhere different.

Contacts for me. My day to day glasses prescription is for bifocals, but ask your optician for a suitable (distance) prescription for riding a bike and you can wear any sunglasses you please……

Nice to see again, still brilliant…..

Pure One in my garage, works great. My wife paid £3 for it at a boot fair. It is pink though…..

I have a Pure one Mi which I use around the house, was expensive with the optional charger pack, but it too is good.

No road bike here I’m afraid – however I’ve a cross bike with discs so I have a link with the dark side…

Used to ride road bikes when I was younger, but got put off by a number of accidents so stopped riding all together, started riding again in my late thirties on mountain bikes,I do much prefer riding off road, but with few really difficult trails in Essex got a cross bike, tend to ride it much more than my mountain bikes now, but full roadieness is a bit too much I’m afraid. (OK I admit it lycra is worn but with MTB SPDs….).

Same device as the scroll excel I am using now. With ICS it is certainly worth it for £80. There are better devices for a little more money, but it is not bad.

Bruk, Schwalbe Smart Sams, no other reason than they were cheap from On-One. Work OK on and off road.

Bruk, do you mean one of these?

[/url]
FILE0003[/url] by LittleTones000[/url], on Flickr

Got one too. It’s not really a traditional cross bike, more a mongrel of cross and mountain bike, so maybe not for a racer. I like mine a lot….

Not quite the same as you.Right hand side, push down, but between brake and gear lever. LHS I tend to associate with fork lockout, so I didn’t put it there. You are right about the lever though, it’s not that clever, but it does work.

My experiences with them have been OK. In recent years a couple of expensive items, Trance X frame and a Giant dropper post have been delivered promptly within a few days. I did phone beforehand in both cases and my expectations were not for CRC or Merlin delivery times. I just haven’t found them to be as hopeless as some here have stated…..

I’ve got a Kings Cross and love it to bits. It’s not a cyclocross bike in all fairness, but a hybrid cross/mtb/commuter bike with drop handlebars. In other words it’s a bit of a Mongrel, a compromise.

The slack angles mean that it is quite able to hold it’s own as a rigid mtb and I can ride all the trails I normally ride with a mtb on a Kings Cross with 35mm cycloX tyres, although a little slower. In addition it’s a competent road bike. It is not, in my opinion a race bike.

It is the sort of bike that you really need a test ride, to know whether it is right for you. HTH.

Apologies for recommending Crusade – Admittedly It was cheesy, and although it was the continuation of the Babylon 5 story, it wasn’t really essential. I think if it had lasted it might have been better, in the same way Babylon 5 was.

Is babylon 5 crusade any good?

If you liked Babylon 5 then yes, but it’s not worth watching in Isolation on it’s own. Because it was cancelled it is an incomplete storyline.

[Geek Mode] There’s also seven Babylon 5 ‘films’ which fit into the B5 universe which you may not be aware of:- ‘In the Beginning’, ‘The Gathering’, ‘River of Souls’, ‘Thirdspace’, ‘The Legend of the Rangers’, ‘A Call to Arms’ and ‘The Lost Tales’.

Of all of these if you want to watch Crusade, you should watch ‘A Call to Arms’ first and ‘In the Beginning’ gives the John Sheridan and Minbari war back story. The rest are not so essential. [Geek Mode]

Hope that’s useful.

In addition to all of the obvious good ones previously mentioned. B5, BSG, Firefly etc.

Space: Above and Beyond – single series of 20 Episodes, bit cheesy for the first 15, but the end 5 were exceptional, but by then was cancelled…. It is worth a watch though.

I buy them, a small price to pay for a tiny amount of hope…….

Recent documentary faves

TT – Closer to the edge

Oil City Confidential (Dr Feelgood by Julien Temple)

Early Reports are mentioning Trevor Brooking as Caretaker.

There’s quite a few places to ride mountain bikes in the Castlepoint, Rochford parts of South Essex, but there’s nothing particularly ‘Eplc’ and you will need to link pockets of riding together to make it work. I’ve been riding a cross bike recently which could be another way to make your time in South Essex more interesting. It isn’t a complete loss, but with a bit of effort it can be made to be worthwhile.

I’m going to have to find out a bit more about this Mark Grist chap – he is rather good. As an old boy it’s like going back to John Cooper Clarke in the 80’s.

generally I liked the old boy, he did have this tendency however to wind everybody up to a fever pitch which could have kept the average punter at bay from the forum. I’ve always tended to have sat back and left the bighitters to get on with things though when this was happening. On the other hand I can understand why Mark might be a bit fed up with Fred and why he got banned.

That was good – It wasn’t as if the youngster was bad, it was just that the Teacher was good – rapper vs poet so to speak….

They had a 10% code 10PAC which was valid to Friday 27th. I wouldn’t have mentioned the price,but I thought the code was valid till the end of Jan……..sorry.
30.9mm only.

Ordered one online from Je James for £144 last week, due to be delivered on Monday. Looking forward to playing with it. There are a few places offering these now, so will be interesting to see how they compare to the RS Reverb.

Last thing I did that with was Fade Away by the Mummers, heard on the Mark Ratcliffe show,went out and bought their back catalogue. Prior to that Richard Hawley suffered the same fate…….

Similar thing here, 2009 trance x with rev 110-140 u-turns. I find 140 to too much for anything other than downhill. Tend to have them set at 125 for most use. Flat bars or lo risers is most definitely something to consider too.

Our freeview signal is very weather dependent here in South Essex up on the ‘Downs’. High pressure, high winds all tend to make freeview unusable. We have had to install a freesat receiver to ensure continuity of service. When switchover is complete at the end of April and the Freeview signal strength is increased this problem should no longer exist. Perhaps this situation applies to you as well?

Went to 710mm on both Mtbs, but soon went bact to 680mm on my hardtail which is mainly used in the woods local to me. I prefer the longer length of bar, but there’s only so many times I can catch the bars on trees without thinking I might come off and hurt myself.

I replaced the M540s on my Trance X with some M530 (cheaper version of M785). I wanted to try the platforms first, thus the cheaper version. The Jury’s out so far, more stability with the platforms, but harder to clip in or out of. To be fair I haven’t ridden the Trance much since then, so haven’t fully mastered that part fully yet.

Whyte hybrid commuter/CX bike

I’ve been finding this rather good – It’s not a traditional CX bike, very long, lots of stability, quite handy for muddy Essex tracks.

I’m not sure it would be the best bike to race on, but it suits me for pootling around.

Many apologies I was looking at the 2012 specs – in light of that the Maven is more attractive then. It is a good price. Previous advice applies for fit etc however.

Tiagra 2×10 on the Defy, Sora 2×9 on the Maven. Both (Sub) Deore, Tiagra the Best. If you know what you’re looking at there are second hand bargains to be had, but if you don’t then buying new is a good option until you do.

Edit as per Cpt Slow really…